The Saturday before Thanksgiving, I threw my back out. I woke up, brought Rocco to his high chair, tried to do some stretches in the living room to ease some stiffness and, then, just like that, la, la, la, found I couldn’t walk. Tim was still asleep and Rocco was asking for more breakfast, but suddenly it was all I could do to hobble back to the bedroom, wake my husband and, frantically, ask him for help.

I’m a freelancer, which means a big chunk of my work life is spent assessing projects, looking at what’s required and estimating what I can give in response. In other words, knowing how to hold up my capabilities against what’s demanded is a pretty practiced skill, one in which I’m not prone to overestimate. That’s how I knew with confidence, standing in the streaks of morning light, talking to my husband with my back hunched, even saying I could meet him in the kitchen would have been a stretch. The very core of my body was in panic mode. No matter how I moved, it hurt. I looked at Tim, ran through my mental to-do list for the day and moved, slowly, awkwardly, back to bed. The errands, laundry and cooking we’d planned for the morning were out. Tim would have to handle Rocco and make the venison tacos and do all the things I could no longer do for myself.

All that remained for me to do was to slow down and rest. I hated it.

Providentially, this all happened on a Saturday when we had no concrete plans to cancel, just a wide-open day of self-imposed tasks (mine) and making venison tacos (Tim’s) to share with you here. So while I laid on my side with a pillow between my legs, just like I’d done when I was full-term with Rocco and trying to get some sleep each night, I didn’t have anything to do but the hard, real work of releasing the expectations I had held.

Eventually, meat simmering on the stove, we took a nap for two hours while Rocco slept in his room, something that hasn’t happened since the hazy newborn days, when I was too tired for to-do lists and too injured for high expectations. Our friend Terry came over that night and worked on me long and hard enough, bless him, that I was at least able to stand up straight again. Monday and Tuesday, I went to the chiropractor. Wednesday, I was still in some pain. We had to cancel plans, we didn’t go home for Thanksgiving and I spent a solid chunk of days watching Tim bring me food while I wished he didn’t have to.

Also providentially, it so happens that this injury hit me right in the midst of a few days in which I’d been meditating on some verses in Romans 5: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” I had these words on a little 3″ x 5″ card I’d been looking at every day, so when it turned out I was bed- or sofa-ridden, the phrase “rejoice in our sufferings” was what kept flashing through my mind. Then, my November Bible reading was taking me through the epistles, where, over and over again, the idea of suffering having value and purpose kept coming up*.

The idea of actually rejoicing—being thankful for, glad about, pleased by—an experience you’d describe as suffering, whether that suffering is hurting your back, losing someone you love, not getting the job or being rejected by a friend, is so counterintuitive, so countercultural, so exactly the opposite of what my mind wants to do when I face something I don’t want. To believe that physical pain, emotional pain, rejection, injury, slander, unkindness or even just the weariness of daily life is a good thing, a thing that is producing endurance and character and hope, is not natural and not easy. It’s work. And, to the chagrin of my task-driven personality, it’s a work without a tangible, obvious reward. You don’t get a gold star or a pat on the back. You can’t even see a sparkling tub or organized closet at the end. Faith is about a hidden value, the unfading beauty of the inner disposition of the heart.

Tim made the tacos that Saturday, like he’d made them before, like he ended up making them again last night. Each time, I watched him do it. And yesterday as the meat simmered, the house filled with the same savory aroma I remembered from the slow Saturday before, I was buzzing around organizing and cleaning and completing online tasks, back to the pace I’m used to keeping. I definitely hated throwing out my back and being immobilized. I hated having to be dependent and slow. But even I can see it was good for me to throw out my back the week before Thanksgiving because it forced me to stop, to slow down, to remember my days aren’t measured by how much gets done.

Tim’s Venison Tacos

I loved these tacos. In case any of you out there finds yourself the recipient of a windfall of delicious, steak-like, non-gamey deer meat like we have this hunting season (thank you, Pastor Ray!), I would be happy to come over and eat these with you anytime.

Directions:
Warm olive oil in a Dutch oven, add venison and brown it briefly over medium heat. After the meat is browned, add broth, butter, vinegar, coconut sugar and all the spices. Cover and place in a 250F degree oven for 2.5 to 3 hours. Meat will be fork tender when done.

* We have made these several times, and you can very easily tweak this method for the spices you prefer.

* You can even just throw everything together in a crockpot and leave it on all day.

* Our favorite toppings so far for these tacos have been pineapple, goat cheddar, cabbage sliced thin, red onion, and salsa—but have your way with ’em. We also really like the hard-shell organic tacos from Trader Joe’s. Have you tried those? So good.

It’s Friday afternoon. I’m sitting at my work desk, one half of a full-wall desk Tim built for me a few months after Rocco was born. My chair is next to a window to the backyard, a lush monochrome of greens, and from it, as I finish my plate of chicken fajitas, I hear the quiet hum of a plane whooshing by overhead. The baby is asleep. The house is still. I have work projects awaiting me, and, right now, while I have the space, I should get to them, but first I want to mark this moment, this stillness. In the first days with a newborn, you think you’ll never have chunks of stillness again, but here it is, peaceful and ordinary and real.

I’m in the midst of a new book, God in the Dark, a journal of thoughts written by poet Luci Shaw. I grabbed it Wednesday night at the library, on a whim, and I’m already so far through, I’ll finish it Saturday, cozy on the sofa with Tim as sunlight streams through house. This collection of short thoughts, thoughts Luci kept in the 1980s while her husband got sick, went through chemo, died and then left her a widow, are easy to read, almost like modern-day blog posts. She deals with all the important topics you’d expect in a book like this: suffering, relationships, faith, grief. But, also, notably, unforgettably, she deals with beauty. Even amidst a hard, painful, tragic set of events, Luci is regularly, constantly arrested by the beauty around her. She is always remarking on or pulling her car over (mid-appointments, pre-breakfast, on vacations, before bad news, on the way to church, on the way home from brunch) to see something that catches her eye. She stops to notice the light as it hits a golden maple tree or clicks her camera’s shutter just as the sun shines through a certain throat of road.

The night I started reading her book, immediately drawn in to the poetic words, I Googled her and read about her life and saw some of her photos, taken with the eye of attention. There’s something I recognize in myself in the way she draws in close to fern fronds or the delicate petals of a bloom. I also found this interview, posted last year, where, she said this:

“My work, given to me by God, is to pay attention. This is to investigate, think about, pray about, and write about ordinary things to expose their significance. I need to write down what I observe and what I intrinsically know so it doesn’t get lost in the daily-ness of life.”

Even as she’s not writing poetry, she’s doing something poetry’s known for: slowing me down, making me think, shining an awareness of value into what could seem routine. She’s reminding me, in fact, of the ideas from another poet I talked about here recently and about the significance of marking value so it’s not lost. I thought about it yesterday when I was driving east of the city, past airport roads fringed by wildflowers growing out of concrete. I thought about it this Friday morning when I was laughing at Rocco slapping his hands together in the living room, one over the other, again and again. And just now, when I pulled out leftover chicken fajitas to warm up for lunch and reheat, when I handed Tim a plate of them where he’s working on his laptop on the sofa, when I took a plate back to my work desk, to eat, I couldn’t do it without stopping, just for a second, to think about it, notice it, give thanks.

There are lots of stories I could tell you about these fajitas, which we’ve been making for over a year and, for a solid chunk of months, once a week. They first came to us last spring, when my brother made them for us on one of our visits to Chicago; then, in the first few weeks after Rocco’s birth, he made them for us again, here in our home. I remember feeling so ravenously hungry when I ate them last July, constant nursing and napping sessions punctuated by watching TV and taking something else to my mouth. Every meal someone brought us was manna–a provision straight from God to me–and when I ate my warmed white spelt tortilla stuffed with chunks of spicy chicken topped by salsa, lettuce and cheese, I couldn’t believe how good it felt to fill my belly to the brim.

Months later, when friends had babies, these fajitas were what I usually brought. When I wanted a meal I knew we would love, both for the nostalgia of a big heap of chicken (just like my mom always made) and for the belly-filling joy of a hearty plate, it was these fajitas again. For several months of meal planning, we included them every week. Making them again yesterday, all those moments came rushing back to me. This is the power of a beloved recipe.

And what is worth marking now, here in this space, is the ordinary poetry of meals like these, meals made as part of routine, shared with one another, pulled out to warm up on the stove so we can keep working at our respective corners of the house. These meals aren’t always flashy or pinnable, but they’re useful and, more than that, used. They’re the actual meals we’re actually making to keeping getting from day to day. They’re functional and enjoyable and happily passed on, from brother to sister to friend, because everybody wants another good way to put dinner on the table each night.

This is what makes me want to food blog, less of a passion for cooking and more of a passion for enjoying. I’m not a chef and don’t pretend to be; I’m not even an obsessive home cook; I just enjoy food. I enjoy what it connects to and how it fits into the rest of life. I enjoy talking about it to talk about everything else. And like Robert Capon said, “The world may not need another cookbook, but it needs all the food lovers it can get” (paraphrased).

It is my opinion that our everyday moments, alongside chicken fajitas or what-have-you, are remarkably valuable and worth our attention. They are worth pulling the car over, so to speak, worth pulling out the mental shutter, worth pausing often to look at and see. I want this space to be a sort of poet’s look at food, more than a list of recipes, more than pretty photos. I want it to be an online space the celebrates everyday beauty through or alongside something to eat. After all, whether our days be currently filled with grieving and hospital visits or celebrating and exciting trips, they are still, usually, naturally punctuated by invitations to stop, if just for lunch, and not take for granted what is sitting on our plates. What a beautiful way to see the world gratitude gives us! What wisdom in seeing and spreading beauty wherever we go! I am learning from the poets, growing towards them, wondering how I can better celebrate the wild and wondrous world in which we live. If you’re here with me, noticing where you are, I’m glad.

Chicken Fajitas

After making this a couple times, I decided we like our fajitas heavier on the peppers and onions than most people, so the biggest departure from the original recipe here is doubled amounts of vegetables. You can also feel free to adjust to your liking; truthfully, another pepper wouldn’t bother me at all here.

Also note: You can make the chicken marinade a few hours ahead of time or right away when you’re ready to cook; I’ve done either way and either way works.

Directions:
In a large glass bowl, combine all the marinade ingredients, stir everything together with a spoon or your clean hands until the chicken is fully coated. Cover bowl and stick it in the fridge for a few hours, until you’re ready to start dinner, or a few minutes, while you make the pepper-onion mixture.

In your biggest skillet, warm the coconut oil and add all the peppers and onions. Toss the salt over the top. Cook, stirring often, until peppers are soft and just starting to char. Then, scoop them all out to a clean bowl or plate.

In the same skillet, scoop out the chicken pieces from the marinade bowl with tongs and cook for a few minutes on each side, without stirring, until chicken is fully cooked and beautifully golden. Add all the peppers and onions (if your skillet won’t fit everything, you can do this in batches) and lower heat to just barely still on.

Blogging gives lots of gifts, but the opportunities to connect with souls you may have never met otherwise has got to be my favorite–and a perfect example of that would be the very lovely Erin Alderson from Naturally Ella. I can’t talk about Erin without gushing because she is at once an incredibly talented recipe developer/photographer and a genuinely kind and thoughtful person that Tim and I are blessed to have sat down with in offline life. Like me, she’s originally from Illinois but now lives somewhere totally different (in her case, California!) because of love. She is also, insert squeal here, 36 weeks pregnant right now (!!), soon to deliver her first child, a boy, and so today a bunch of bloggers are celebrating her in a virtual baby shower filled with easy vegetarian meals (all the shower/recipe links are at the bottom, just before the recipe break). For our contribution, we’re bringing these burgers, which are Erin’s original recipe, taken from her recently released new book.

I made the easy choice of making one of Erin’s own recipes for this post because, as you may remember, Erin’s first book, The Homemade Flour Cookbook, is the one I raved about here last year, and her new book, The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen is another that gets me into all kinds of superlatives—I just can’t think of a resource anywhere that I trust as quickly as Erin when it comes to vegetarian recipe ideas because everything she makes looks gorgeous, feels approachable and 100% of the time turns out to be a great dish when we make it. The new book from which these burgers come is such a brilliant concept—recipe formulas for kitchen staples like omelets and panzanellas and flatbreads and risotto, each spun four different ways to show how creativity in the kitchen can work. The fact that it’s all vegetarian is even more impressive because it’s like someone has finally offered the perfect answer to “What else can we do with fruit and vegetables?” but, in keeping with Erin’s style, in a super approachable way for the home cook.

Erin, We’re so excited for you to become a mama and get to bless a new little human with your skilled, hard-working, consistently humble approach to everything you do! This baby is rich already, and we say that, so seriously, because he’s got you. I can’t wait to watch you love him and learn from him and pass on anything and everything you know (we’re a month behind you, so give us all the tips, haha!). Genuinely jumping up and down with joy and so much hope for you and M and for this little miracle. xx and let’s plan a cross-country play date sometime soon!

Visit these other sites to join in on the fun of Erin’s online baby shower (and see some great recipes, too)!

Erin says in her book headnote that she’s kind of picky about veggie burgers, which is something anyone who’s had a bad version of a veggie burger will understand. They’re often flavorless or have weird textures or, super common ailment, easily fall apart. So to remedy this, here, she uses a chickpea-based recipe that comes together quickly in a food processor, then forms that mixture into patties and bakes the mounds before grilling or, in our case, sautéing to brown. The preliminary bake time firms up the burgers and makes them much more stable and able to hold their shape, and the sautéing or grilling gives a great crisp exterior into which you can bite. We ate ours with lettuce and ketchup and dijon!

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a food processor, pulse the onion into small pieces. Add the rest of the ingredients, chickpeas through salt, waiting on the spinach for a bit. Blend until well combined, with the egg and flour evenly dispersed throughout. Then, add the spinach, pulse again and stop when everything is just combined.

Remove the blade from the food processor and, with wet hands, form four equal patties and set them on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes and then either grill for 2 to 3 minutes on each side or, what we did, sauté on the stove in a little coconut oil until browned on each side.

Serve on buns, with your choice of condiments (we did lettuce, ketchup and dijon mustard). Enjoy!

I come from a long line of women who can cook: My great grandma, I’m told, made legendary pasta. My grandma rolled her own cannoli shells. My mom, a woman who loves to say, Oh, it’s so simple (particularly when her only daughter asks for clarification on some new recipe trick), has a vast cooking repertoire that ranges from bakery-worthy apple strudel to hot chicken curry just the way my dad likes it.

And as with a lot of things in life, I feel there are different ways to approach this kind of heritage: Embrace it. Or resent it.

I’ll let you guess which way I tended towards for most of my childhood and only say this: it’s amazing how we can turn blessings into curses, how we can choose to be intimidated by that which can help us grow. You may call it perfectionism; I call it ugly.

It’s like, say, when you have the opportunity to start working from home: This is such an obvious good (especially as it is the thing—the very thing—you have wanted and worked towards for years!), yet you can let yourself see it as a bad (citing all the potential problems/risks, from insurance to pay to the way it feels to step into the Unknown).

That same vice that makes you see the negatives in one situation will make you see the problems in others. But I’ve been thinking. Maybe the parallel works both ways? Maybe by learning to embrace a heritage of good home cooks, for example, you step towards learning to embrace everything else. What do you think?

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"That's at the root of all giving, don't you think? At the root of all art. You can't hoard the beauty you've drawn into you; you've got to pour it out again for the hungry, however feebly, however stupidly. You've just got to." Elizabeth Goudge

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." J.R.R. Tolkien

"Every kind word spoken, every meal proffered in love, every prayer said, can become a feisty act of redemption that communicates a reality opposite to the destruction of a fallen world." Sarah Clarkson